Chapter 56 - Charisma?

“HAH?!” Samantha jerked up from her seat, slamming the table when she heard the name.

“That Laurim?!” she repeated, making sure her ears were functioning properly. “Are you sure?!”

Taken aback by Samantha’s sudden outburst, Kang was confused but nodded, “Yes, Laurim. Our class rep.”

Laurim Foster, who was once Lucas and the girls’ class representative before the world turned upside down. When they were about to leave the lecture hall, it was Laurim who blocked their way. When they defeated the Goblin King in the campus stadium, it was Laurim who came to mess with them.

Who could’ve imagined that name would pop up again?

Growling, Samantha spat, “That idiot is still alive?! He once changed an entire section of my code, turning it into a horrendous mess! Then, during the presentation, the program crashed because it wouldn’t run properly. And he even had the guts to blame me!”

“Samantha,” Chloe suddenly called out with a sigh. “We know that story already.”

“Okay, I’ll change it, then. I punched that idiot’s face so hard his own mother wouldn’t recognize him!” Samantha snorted, sitting back in her chair.

“Samantha,” Chloe called out again. “That doesn’t sound like a complaint, it sounds more like a statement.”

Samantha clicked her tongue and retorted, “Tsk! That’s an achievement. You wouldn’t understand.”

Listening to Samantha’s rant on Laurim Foster, Kang’s eyes widened as he blurted out, “Wait… are you the ones who betrayed him? I’ve heard Laurim always cursing at someone for ‘betraying’ him… So it was you guys.”

“Betray?” Samantha was baffled. She roared, “What the hell does that even mean?! We weren’t even friends! How the hell am I supposed to betray some stranger?! That idiot!”

Kang nodded and added, “He said that back when he was still on campus, someone stole all the credit for defeating the Boss and even beat him to a pulp.”

Hearing this, Samantha couldn’t resist flaring up again, “COWARD! BASTARD! IDIOT! I will rip you apart and feed you to the dogs myself!”

While Samantha was fuming and practically breathing fire, Lucas, who had been silently listening to Kang’s story, frowned. He suddenly asked, “Kang, did no one else reject the idea of facing a red gate?”

Kang shook his head, “No. No one did. Some were hesitant about it, but Laurim easily convinced them to fight.”

“I see…” Lucas murmured before asking another question. “Okay, Kang. Why did you choose to follow Laurim?”

“H-huh? What do you mean by that?” Kang stammered at Lucas’s sudden question.

“Literally. Why did you join him?” Lucas repeated, then added, “Did Jesse agree too?”

At Lucas’s unexpected question, Chloe and Samantha, who had stopped cursing, perked up. In their eyes, Laurim Foster wasn’t anyone special, while Kang and Jesse were the special ones.

Jesse Helbrinn was a healer, any sensible person would treat her like a VIP. And Kang Karlot was her lover-slash-knight. It only made sense not to mess with Kang just to stay on Jesse’s good side. In simpler terms, people should have been following Kang and Jesse’s lead instead.

So why did Kang Karlot and Jesse Helbrinn follow Laurim Foster?

Faced with the question, Kang frowned and tried to think, but no answer came to mind. He had no idea why he joined Laurim. Combing through his memories, he realized Laurim wasn’t exactly the smartest or the wisest leader. Many of Laurim’s instructions and tactics were out of place, yet the others still followed him, even Kang himself.

On occasion, Jesse would shoot down his instructions, but her voice was always drowned out by the majority.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Kang muttered, deep in thought, “Yeah… why did we follow that coward? He wasn’t the smartest leader at all. Some of his orders made no sense… But why?”

“Say, did you find Laurim handsome?” Lucas suddenly posed another odd question.

“Handsome…” Kang muttered, frowning hard. Eventually, he nodded and said, “Yeah… I mean, I don’t know, but Laurim gave off a likable and pleasing feeling. If that’s the right word?”

Lucas hummed at Kang’s answer. Meanwhile, Chloe and Samantha were confused and immediately pressed him, “What’s going on? Is there something wrong with Laurim?”

“Nah, I’m just curious why people tend to follow him,” Lucas shrugged. “Didn’t you notice that people around Laurim oddly agree with him a little too much? Whether it was back in the stadium or in Kang’s story.”

Hearing Lucas’s words, Chloe and Samantha furrowed their brows in thought. As he pointed out, everyone was too agreeable with Laurim. Facing an unknown, never-before-seen red gate appearing out of thin air, people’s first reaction should have been wariness.

After all, red is commonly associated with danger, it’s the color of blood, harm, and warning.

Yet, under Laurim’s leadership, people were oddly confident. In a community of fifty, at least one or two should have rejected the idea of facing the unknown. But no one did. This got Lucas thinking and deducing Laurim’s Talent.

“Hey, hey, stop with the cliffhanger and just tell us already,” Chloe snorted, pinching and twisting Lucas’s ear.

Ignoring the pain from his now-reddened ear, Lucas coughed and said, “I think there’s a reason why people keep following Laurim despite his poor leadership. I believe his Talent must be related to charisma or brainwashing.”

"I think Lucas is right," a voice suddenly spoke.

When Lucas and the others turned toward the source, they saw Jesse walking out of her room despite her pale face. Seeing this, Kang hurriedly ran over to support her.

"Are you alright? You should rest more," Kang asked with concern as he held Jesse’s hand.

"I'm alright," Jesse smiled at the man before her and gave him a small peck on the lips. "But I'm a bit hungry," she giggled.

“Ahh! One couple is enough already! Why is there a second one?!" Samantha growled, ruffling her hair in frustration. "I'm going to explode at this rate!"

Chloe frowned at Jesse’s pale face and asked, "Are you sure you’re fine?"

"Yes, thank you for asking," Jesse smiled before turning to Lucas. "As Lucas said earlier, I think he's right about Laurim’s Talent."

"What do you mean?" Chloe asked, curious about Jesse’s statement.

Jesse sighed and took a seat. She began, “As a healer, I’m quite sensitive to anything related to the mind or willpower. It’s part of my Class. But whenever Laurim spoke to me, I always felt this… nagging feeling in my mind.”

She paused, her brows knitting together as she tried to put it into words. “At first, it made me wary of him. Something about him felt off, but I couldn’t quite place it. But the more time I spent around him, the more that feeling dulled. It didn’t go away, but it became… muted, like white noise in the background. After a while, I just stopped thinking about it, like my instincts were being numbed. It was only because of that initial wariness that I kept my distance from him.”

Lucas took a sip from his glass and muttered, “So you’re saying there was something unnatural about how Laurim made people feel comfortable around him?”

Jesse nodded, “Exactly. It wasn’t normal. I noticed it more than others because of my Class, but for the rest of the group, I think they just accepted whatever he said without questioning it. His words just made sense to them, even if they shouldn’t have.”

“That really sounds like some kind of mind-affecting Skill or Talent,” Samantha frowned and added, “That explains why he had so much influence over the group. Even Kang, who now realizes Laurim was an idiot, still followed him without thinking twice.”

Clenching his fists, Kang’s face contorted in anger as he became increasingly disturbed by the revelation. He muttered, “If that’s true, then we weren’t just stupid. We were manipulated. That bastard was messing with our heads the entire time, wasn’t he?”

“I can’t say for sure,” Jesse bit her lip. “But it felt that way. I don’t know if it was full-blown mind control or just a persuasive aura, but something about him kept people from questioning his decisions.”

“Hold on,” Chloe suddenly called out. “Then why weren’t we affected? I mean, back in the lecture hall and the stadium, he could’ve just persuaded us, right?”

Realizing this, Samantha’s frown deepened, but Lucas just chuckled, “Easy. We’ve got higher stats than him.”

“If my unlimited webnovel experience ever taught me anything, it’s that mind-control or charismatic stuff can be resisted with INT and WIL,” Lucas smiled, sipping from his glass again. “In the lecture hall, he was talking to me, but my combined INT and WIL were probably higher or at least equal to his, and since our levels were low, it didn’t affect me too much. And in the stadium, we had already invested some points into our INT and WIL, so naturally, we didn’t feel it either.”

“Jesse could feel it because of her unique Class and Talent. And why it dulled for her? It might be because of the constant activation of that Talent or Skill of his. Jesse just got used to it, which, in some sense, was another form of mind control.”

Placing his glass down, Lucas smiled, “That will be all from me. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.”